I wish I could trust you
by all kings and lionhearts
Summary: For the most part, she had no problem letting him go if it meant she didn't have to suffer the pain later. She didn't want anyone one to have the power to hurt her.


There was a knock at the door.

Reyna looked up at the records she'd been skimming and glanced at the clock. It was past eight on a Wednesday. There were classes the next day for most of the campers. There wasn't anyone who would be at her door at this time, outside of an emergency.

Except for one.

"Yes?" she finally called, feigning cluelessness.

"It's me," Jason called through the door. "Can I come in?"

Reyna glanced at her desk chair, where her toga was carefully hung over the back. She was wearing track pants and an SPQR shirt. Her hair was damp from a recent bath._ He's seen you in sleep clothes plenty of times_, she reminded herself. _You were friends long before you became praetors_.

_True. But that was before Charleston_.

She paused, unsure, then grabbed an algebra textbook (who cared if she'd taken that class last year?), two notebooks, and a manila folder filled with papers and threw them down in front of her. "Sure," she called, twisting her hair into a knot and jamming a pen into it.

When Jason opened the door and stepped inside, he saw Reyna sitting cross-legged on her bed, surrounded by homework, notes, and papers, a pen in her hair and another in her hand.

"Evening, Jason," she said smoothly. "You need something?" Hopefully, he would be in and out once he saw how 'busy' she was.

"Uh, yeah." He leaned against the door frame. "You wanna go for a walk? We could get ice cream or something."

Reyna frowned, not quite expecting this, then looked out the window. "It's getting dark."

"Not that dark. Besides, it's never stopped you before."

"It's too cold for ice cream."

"It's seventy-five degrees out."

"I have a trigonometry test tomorrow." Reyna hoped this last one would get him to leave, and slipped her hand under her thigh, crossing her fingers.

"Really?" Jason tilted his head, most of his upper body, actually. "I don't think you'll do very well then. Isn't that your algebra book from last year?" He grinned, and Reyna knew she was trapped. "Come on, Reyna, please? We'll be back before curfew, I promise."

His blue eyes were wide, and so was his smile, as he looked at her the same as he always did. She hesitated. "Fine," she sighed. She slid her feet in a pair of flip flops, dropped a few denarii from her nightstand into her pocket, and followed him out.

A few minutes later, they were wandering down the main road of camp in silence. They weren't the only ones out, of course, since curfew wasn't officially till nine and most of the campers barely made it to their barracks in time, but she felt oddly separated from the others.

"This is nice," Jason said finally. "Look at all the stars."

Reyna smiled slightly as she looked up. "Pretty," she agreed, like it wasn't the exact same sky she'd been gazing at almost every night for nearly four years.

"Kind of like your eyes, when they do that cute sparkly thing sometimes," he continued.

"Excuse me?" She tried to sound surprised, or at least flattered, but she couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up from her throat and out of her mouth. "What sparkly thing?"

"When you laugh." Jason was smiling too. "Like now, almost."

"Thanks, then, I never knew that." She thought about how she used to love it when Jason gave her an awkward, if a little misguided, complement. Like the time he'd told her her hair would look just like her armor if she'd put ribbons in it. Because it's shiny, he'd quickly added upon seeing her face. "Maybe tomorrow morning I'll tell you how your hair reminds me of the sun."

Jason smiled softly, and a second later, Reyna felt his fingers gently closing around hers.

_He'll leave you without a second thought._

She could see Venus, smiling that little condescending, self-satisfied smile at her. She heard her voice as she warned Reyna against continuing her relationship with Jason. She stiffened, and quickly shook her hand free. "Look, there's the custard stand," she said, pointing. "I like it better than ice cream anyway. Come on."

Jason shoved his hands into his pockets. She knew she'd embarrassed him, but she told herself she didn't care and didn't apologize. "Uh, okay," he agreed, kicking at a rock and following.

After they'd ordered and the boy behind the counter- Alex, he had Advanced Latin with them- handed them the frozen custards they'd both ordered, Jason started to count out money for both. Reyna, seeing what he was trying to do, reached into her pocket and plunked her coins down on the counter.

Jason stopped, then looked over at her and slowly returned the extra money to his pocket, handing the rest to Alex. Alex looked at them curiously, but all he said was, "Have a good evening." As soon as he closes the register, Reyna started off at a pace probably quicker than necessary.

Jason caught up with her a second later. "Hey, Reyna," he said, falling into step next to her. "Are you mad at me or something?"

"No," she answered truthfully, using her spoon to mix the frozen treat into an artful swirl. "Why?"

"It's just that..." Jason paused. "I mean, like just now. When I tried to, uh…" He trailed off uncertainly. "And when you wouldn't let me pay-"

"You don't have to pay for me, Jason," Reyna slowly and deliberately. "It's not like this is a date."

"Yeah, I know." Jason shook his head and kicked at another rock, frustrated. "But it also seems like you've been avoiding me for a couple of months now. We never really talk or hang out that much anymore, except for camp stuff."

Reyna ducked her head, feeling guilty. Maybe she wasn't as nice about it as she could have been. "I hadn't noticed," she murmured into the small plastic cup of custard. Once again, she secretly crossed her fingers. He couldn't find out about Charleston.

"You haven't?" Jason sounded hurt. "Really?"

Reyna shook her head. She was painfully aware of how close Jason stood. How their shoulders almost touched. How he was at least five inches taller. She really hoped he wouldn't try the hand-holding thing again.

"Well, maybe we should try to hang out a little more," Jason suggested hopefully. "Nightly walks like this, since I guess we have too many responsibilities during the day."

Before she even realized what she was doing, Reyna found herself nodding in agreement. He was right, halfway at least. Even if she weren't avoiding him, they wouldn't have much time during the day to just hang out anyway.

Then a voice invaded her thoughts: _No matter how hard you try, you'll lose him, in the end._

Reyna's face contoured into a grimace, and she shook her head, both at the voice and at Jason's suggestion. "Maybe not," she said quietly.

Jason, who'd been rambling about other things they could do on their walks aside from eating ice cream, stopped short. "Maybe not?" he repeated. "But... why?"

She shrugged, keeping her head down to hide her face. Reyna, in the last few months, had gotten pretty good at manipulating her features into an indifferent mask, and could usually do it without too much trouble.

This was not usually.

"Reyna, come on," Jason pleaded. "What did I do?"

She looked up at him, seeing his frustrated, sad expression, and her stomach twisted. She wanted to trust him, she really wanted to...

_He won't ever look back._

...but she _can't_.

She stood up a little straighter, anger at him and the stupid goddess fueling her confidence. "Nothing," she said coldly. "Why are you assuming that just because we don't hang out as much means I'm actively avoiding you?"

"Because you_ are_!" Jason looked exasperated. "Don't say that you aren't, you are!" His voice softened. "Look, I don't know what I did, but whatever it was, I'm sorry. Really, really sorry."

"You haven't done anything, Jason," Reyna said calmly and deliberately, an edge of steel creeping into her voice.

"If I haven't done _anything_, then _why_ do you talk to me like I'm just your co-praetor, and not your _friend_?" Jason's voice had risen considerably by the end of the sentence, and several campers stopped what they were doing to watch (and trying to look like they weren't, of course).

"Because you will!" she wanted to shout. But she was not about to lose her head in public. So she merely took a deep breath, turned on her heel, and walked down the street back to her room, tossing the mostly uneaten ice cream into a trash can.

She'd made it fifty feet before Jason shouted, "Good_ night_, Reyna!" after her. She knew him well enough to know that he'd also stalked off, probably going around a different, longer way so there was no chance of meeting her.

It wasn't until she'd reached her door that she realized this was the closest thing to an actual fight she and Jason had ever had.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, she didn't talk to Jason at all, aside from "camp stuff" and the occasional frosty greeting. The funny thing was, Reyna should have been glad. He can't hurt her now, not that he's nothing to her and vise versa, right?

Except that wasn't true. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, Reyna suddenly realized how much she missed him. They'd known each other for almost three years, three years of quests and celebrations and just plain mundane good memories.

That's a lot of history to throw away because of something he_ might_ do. So what if she was the goddess of love? She didn't know Jason, and Reyna _did_.

She came to this realization in trig. Octavian was giving her the stink eye from across the room, her partner, a girl named Ashley, was trying to make sense of the directions they'd been given, and Reyna had unconsciously started wishing- for what might have been the thousandth time- that Jason was better at math so they'd be in the same class.

She started thinking about the fun they'd had over the years, and all the times they'd had each others' back. Why should she trust Venus over Jason, her best friend? If anything, Jason had shown just how loyal to her he really was last night. Reyna's lips curled up in a halfway smile, and she knew what she had to do.

As soon as class had ended, she jammed her textbook into her satchel and is out of there. It's her last class of the day, and Jason's too (one of the halfway perks of being a praetor was finishing classes a full period early- so they could start on their responsibilities before the rest of the the demigods file into camp).

Before she even made it out the door, she felt a hand on her arm. She whirled around, but it's not who she was hoping for.

"What do you want, Octavian," Reyna said impatiently, crossing her arms. "I need to go talk to Jason."

Octavian smirked. "Nothing," he replied. "But since you brought him up, I was just curious to know if you knew why Jason has been using the side door and taking the long route back to camp for the last few weeks. I think he's avoiding something, what about you?"

"I don't care, Octavian," Reyna snapped, not even bothering to wonder how Octavian knew that despite_ being in class at the time_. Annoyingly, that didn't wipe the smirk off his face, and Reyna didn't have time to do it for him. She turned away and started down the steps. Once she's a good hundred feet away from the old building, she started to jog.

She spotted him a few minutes later, and it occurred to her that the 'long way around' must not be terribly long. Either that, or the far more likely solution, which was that Octavian had picked up on the hostility and was just messing with her head for kicks.

"Jason!" she called. She had to say his name three more times before he turned around and stopped to wait. His eyes were narrowed, and Reyna really hoped it was because of the sun and not that he didn't want to talk to her.

When she caught up, he started walking again. They make their way down the bath in silence for about thirty seconds before Reyna starts to speak.

"Jason, listen," she said. He glanced over at her, face blank. "Look, I'm sorry for the way I treated you." His face didn't change, and she sighed. "It was a personal thing, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

Jason nodded, looking down at the path. "You shouldn't have," he agreed, kicking at a rock. His expression softened with concern. "But why didn't you just tell me? I wouldn't have pressed or anything."

"I know." She looked away, then up at him. "Am I forgiven?"

Jason was clearly trying not to smile. "Yeah, I guess you are." He waved his hand. "So do you wanna, like, get pizza or something? To make it official?"

"Can't, I have test I want to study for," Reyna answered regretfully. "For real this time, sorry."

"Oh." Jason looked down and hid his hands in the folds of his toga, turning away. "I guess I'd better, you know, get back to-"

"How about tomorrow," Reyna continued. "At eight?"

"Yeah." Jason couldn't stop his grin this time. "It's a date, I guess?" He stepped forward, and for an exciting, terrifying moment, Reyna actually thought he was about to kiss her.

But all he did was give her a quick, funny one-armed hug. "Can't wait for tomorrow," he said, cheeks pink and flicking the end of her braid before starting off. "I'm supposed to talk with the consuls in the city, but see you later?"

Reyna reached up to steady her swinging hair and smiled faintly, both disappointed and relieved. "Yeah," she said, waving. "Later."

They never did get to have their date.

The next morning, Jason was gone, disappeared without a trace. He came back eight months later, a new girl on his arm and and new posse of friends, friends that just happened to be their sworn enemies. All without so much as an apology or even a glance in her direction- that is, until he decided New Rome was worthy of showing his new girlfriend.

She should have listened to Venus, she realizes as she watches him him chat and laugh with Piper, who is, in a pretty cruel bout of irony, a daughter of Ven- _Aphrodite_. She wonders if it's her fault he's forgotten all about her, that maybe if she hadn't closed herself off, he wouldn't have had to find someone else. Jason catches her eye just then, and Reyna sends him a curt nod to show she isn't mad and _certainly_ isn't disappointed. Even though she kind of is.

Not that it matters, though. He looks away as quickly as he looks over.


End file.
